Homeless workers have expressed fears that there were as many as eight drug overdoses on one night in Belfast.

The series of suspected overdoses happened last Thursday.

There have been calls for a quicker response to drug-related incidents in order to prevent ‘further deaths’.

The issue has been described as a ‘city-wide’ epidemic and a clear problem among the homeless here.

SDLP Councillor and Homeless Worker Paul McCusker described the problem as ‘serious’.

He told Belfast Live: “Every day I receive calls from those who are using drugs crying out for help as quite often once referred to a service they could wait more than six weeks and if you are using heroin and want help it could take seven months which is outrageous.

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“The community and voluntary sector are working very hard under immense pressure and with increasing numbers every week the PHA and the department of health need to act quickly to respond to the current need and provide a crisis intervention service to prevent further deaths.

“I would call on the department of health and public health agency to make it clear how serious the problem is and they need to put an urgent action plan in place on how to deal with this serious epidemic.”

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Cllr McCusker claimed that services have ‘lost control’ in dealing with drug-related problems.

He said: “The increase in those using drugs and suffering from an addiction isn’t solely within the homeless community but affects every single community in Belfast and across Northern Ireland.

“We need to continually talk about it without fear, provide hope for the addict and lobby until we see some clear action from agencies responsible to prevent more deaths and to take back control of this drug epidemic.”

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